Brushing curled locks from her forehead, Charmz smirked and shrugged her bare shoulders at the webcam she was laying in front of. It was a tame night, but she was laying on her stomach across her bed. No one in the chat was complaining. That changed with her next breathy whisper. ”Alright you heathens, this witch is going to take a shower and call it a night.” Noticing the influx of comments, she giggled and added, ”Sorry. The shower’s a single-player game tonight. Til next time.” She closed out by blowing a kiss. The chat protested, but she already clicked the stop button on her stream.

Sighing, she rolled out of bed and to the floor of her apartment, transitioning into some pushups. She had been burning some Celestite all day, keeping her in a calm, almost spacy headspace all day. That was fine for a day of lounging and being ogled, though it also probably led to a tamer show and a lighter income day. She was doing fine for herself right now, so she could take a day like that. Still, if she wanted to go out and really party tonight, she needed to get her blood pumping.

Getting to her feet, Ezmeralda grabbed a smooth fire agate from the altar on her nightstand and popped it in her mouth, letting it pass her tongue and down her throat. That would keep her fed for a while, encouraging her courage, passion, and risk-taking the longer she let that burn in her stomach.

The steamy shower helped her focus. It was part of her ritual; a cleansing of the world and her distractions. It allowed her to focus and return to the world centered and ready to bring balance to New York.

Donning her costume in the bedroom, Ezmeralda opened her jewelry chest where she had a small collection of gems neatly sorted. After debating, she picked out an amethyst, a tiger’s eye, and a garnet and consumed them in that order. She kept one of each, along with a sapphire, stored in a pouch on her belt and escaped through her alley-side window, carefully scaling the wall from her second-story studio.

She had an earpiece listening into the police radios, hoping for something she could sink her teeth into. Crime was rampant, but she needed to listen for hints to something more sinister. Suspicious activity the police were not willing to address. Reports of criminal enterprises. If nothing came up, she could press some people on the street for leads on something more corrupt than a typical B&E.

For now, she would keep to the shadows and rooftops, treading areas she was treating as high-risk for mutant abduction. What was happening was a rot in her universe, and she wanted to do anything she could to heal it.

---

The Crystal Witch was good at pushing people. Low-level thugs were not looking to take a fireball to the chest, and the smart ones would offer information in exchange for self-preservation.

Supposedly, there was a man involved in taking girls off the street, and many of them were mutants. He was not the one doing the deed, but everyone was pretty sure Dean C. Hackman was finding ways to hide away these abducted girls. No one knew how or why, but he was a clear lead, and CW was desperate for those at this point.

Using a burst of wind to hop from a rooftop to gently land atop a warehouse roof, the vigilante looked around to ensure no guards would be positioned up there. It was an unconventional point of entry, but criminals were paranoid.

Finding a triangular row of windows on the rooftop, CW looked down into the space and what she found validated the criminal informant’s claim. There was a well-dressed man in a suit surrounded by larger men he employed. He was talking to a greasier figure who had his own people leading bound and blindfolded women forward.

Should she intervene now? She had to be cautious, because she would be very outnumbered. More importantly, maybe there was a smarter way to play this for information. What was he going to do with the girls they had? Where did they keep them? If she held on and kept her presence quiet, maybe she could find out.

At times he was on the wrecking crew. Tonight, he was it.

This was supposed to be a small operation. Minimal decisions that wouldn't be too difficult for a man like the Ranger. Noel was doing a fair job of being Ranger in her estimation, but this… this made her wildly uncomfortable.

The Ranger had gotten a special invite with regards from SUPER. He dressed nice, concealed his weapons, and was supposed to sit in a chair in a dusky room and bid on a human life. Because this sort of thing was still going on, apparently. And also apparently, should the operation go south, he had permission to salt the earth afterwards.

No one ever promised to let her salt the earth afterwards.

Noel grumped and sank lower in his chair, taking token sips of his drink and being hyper critical of the women paraded by. She didn’t like it. Even just being here made her feel gross. The women looked scared, cowed, debased, embarrassed. He set his tumbler down when a particularly pitiful soul stumbled on stage. Malnourished was not his cup of tea, but he made a bid anyway. It wasn’t gonna get paid. In fact, he was pretty sure just bringing one or two back alive would be enough.

He stood when she left the stage, ready to follow up.

Evidently, the Crystal Witch’s informant only gave her partial information, likely because they only knew so much. That was the challenge of dealing with street-level thugs. This was the right place, but it appeared the timing was awful or fantastic, depending on what she was looking for. This scene she had stumbled into was not an exchange; it was preparation for an auction.

It was disgusting; rich snobs who played with people’s lives always were. CW kept to the rooftop as sharply dressed men and women took their seats and prepared to bid on human and-or mutant lives. It took effort not to burn the stones turning in her stomach.

While she was watching the faces entering the room, when she looked back to the stage and the curtain concealing a back area, she realized four new girls and two young men were behind the curtain. They were not there before. Were they snuck in that quickly? Was there a trapdoor in the stage?

When would the best time be to interrupt this charade of etiquette? What was her plan, exactly? She had some wind to burn to drop down. She could throw some fireballs, but those were not so widespread and she had to worry about guards. She also wanted to do as much damage as possible to everyone in that space that was not a captive. She hated the cement floors of the warehouse; fire would not spread on that. Maybe the panicking rich folk would spread it?

Okay, she had to focus her anger because someone successfully placed their bid for the underfed young woman being offered up on stage. This was no time for careful planning. She wished she had a fourth “slot” because mist would have been helpful to conceal her actions. She did not want to lose so much Tiger’s Eye in her, so with any luck, her stone skin would protect her from stray gunfire until she took care of the man on the stage with a large-caliber rifle.

Well, hopefully that was how the plan would work because the Crystal Witch had smashed the glass of the skylight window and she plummeted into the room. The shattering of glass was followed by gunshots-- her gunshots. Her fire was useless from this distance, so she spread some gunfire around the crowd and nearby guards.

As the ground came very fast, CW summoned the amethyst zephyr around her, angling and slowing her descent so she could slam into the rifle-wielding guard. She was certain he was not expecting a witch to fall from the sky. No one ever did.

CW turned to the man in charge, hoping to fling a fireball at him, but as she raised a hand she saw him do the same, holding his two hands two feet apart. “Cause trouble elsewhere, little girl.” The space between them distorted. Suddenly, CW felt her stomach turn, like she was losing her equilibrium. Like she was falling without the fall. What the...

He was not the only outside party, it seemed.

A crash of glass heralded wind and a hail of bullets. Irritated bullets. He could somehow tell the person shooting them was irritated at him in particular by the way she shot them. At him. Or maybe it was a byproduct of him being just about everywhere.

He ducked by instinct, quickly closing the space between the girl and her handler. He was pinged a few times and his suit opened up a few holes, but nothing important spilled out. Bullet proof. For a bit. He'd try not to get cut since that was part of the price for taking hits. He took the opportunity to pull his SIG and end the guy holding onto what he referred to as 'the merchandise.' He whirled, weapon steady in both hands to train his aim on the threat.

What landed amidst the hail of glass and ammo was not at all what he'd expected. She was tiny. And fiesty. Her hand went up with fire raising between her fingers and a few quick thoughts tumbled into one another in his head.

She was here the break up the party. That meant she was an ally, but not the huge amount of hellfire sort of back up he'd hoped for. If he took her down... could he take her down? Could he even stand there and watch as whatever that guy was doing got did?

She looked real small compared to the people around.

Noel huffed, grabbed Miss Malnourished like a sack of taters, and lunged at the... woman? Mutant?

Whatever that guy was doing got did.

He hadn't stood around. But he wasn't standing where he thought he'd be by the end of his lunge either.

Disoriented, he straightened and heard the heavy scraping of metal. Looking down, he was surprised by a full suit of armor... that he definitely hadn't been wearing moments ago.

"Put me down."

He quickly put his bidding prize down onto her own two feet. Feet that were in thigh-high leather boots. There were pants. He was sure. They weren't covering much with the artful rips and all, but... they existed. Much like the shirt above that dipped so low... He looked up quickly and noticed a few other things.

"Y'r a redhead now."

"And I have guns. Two of them, actually." She introduced the end of both of the guns to his face and Noel put his hands up in the air.

The world warped and the Crystal Witch felt her head fogging up, shifting her vision. When the effect settled, she slowly got to her feet, noticing leggings of some fine fabric dressing her knees as they left the ground.

Somehow, a wardrobe change was the smallest thing wrong here as crow cawing could be heard from deep within the woods.

The woods she was now standing at the edge of somehow.

The vigilante blinked several times, sure she was just haluscinating and needed to clear the insanity from her eyes. When that did not help, she looked around. Her dress was fine, she had ornate metal bangles, and she felt some kind of headpiece adorning her head. More surprising was a large circular bladed weapon at her feet. It felt… necessary. Without a thought, she grabbed it by the handle.

In seeking to understand her own situation, she finally realized she was not alone. The Crystal Witch bore her weapon against a man in armor and a very… intriguingly dressed woman. ”Who are you? What is this?”

The vigilante was defensive, but she finally noticed names hovering over their heads. Names in green, and though she could not see it, she had one as well written as “TheCrystalWitch” in bright green. ”Hmm… I mean. Green is not exactly the color of an enemy?”

And then the Witch noticed things in her periphery. Icons with tool tips. Menu options. A User Interface? This… was familiar. She had seen this before! ShadyShay’s streams called through her mind.

”Haunted Hallow! What the hell, we’re in a game of Haunted Hallow?” And she was… who was this one? Quinoa, she was pretty sure?

Names? Noel looked up and read "Texhibitionist" and somehow forgot he was being held at gunpoints. A facepalm was necessary. As necessary as the oversized metal gauntlets on his hands and the stupidly gigantic sword at his feet. He started to reach for it, but was interrupted.

"I didn't say you could pick that up." But when she tried, she couldn't. It was there. She had hands, and the guns went up and down with the effort she was making to shoot him but... she couldn't seem to get it to work.

"NotYourNPC" cursed and leveled the gun at him again, obviously trying and failing to pull the trigger.

"No friendly fire." He kept his eyes on her all the same as he crouched and recovered the sword. The third of their… team? They were a team? That’s why their faces showed in his peripheral vision, at the very edge of what he could see.

"What’s a Haunted Hollow?”

A voice came over some kind of PA system as he was trying to see the squares at the bottom. If he looked down at them directly, they moved down more. But if he held his hand out…

”I suggest you ready your weapons, summoned champions. The fight of your life is about to begin.”

NotYourNPC cackled maniacally as a hail of bullets fell around Noel.

The green bar under his Texhibitionist name didn’t budge. That made him notice that all of them had green bars and smaller blue bars… no wait. He didn’t seem to have the blue one.

"How’d you do that?”

”I just hit the square at the bottom. There’s three here, but only one of them is lit up.”

”Minions have spawned”

Texhibitionist? Well, that sounded like the type of name one of her old classmates would have used as an online handle. She knew her fair share of guys who got a little... overzealous with their Texan identity, but she assumed she left most of them on the other side of the Mason-Dixon. Maybe this guy was a transplant, too. At least, as far as she could remember, he did not seem familiar.

He was part of the crowd of slave-buyers, though; of that she was certain. She tried to raise her blade at him, but the green name above his head made it clear she could do nothing. Scoffing, she kept her eyes toward the twisted treeline before them. "It's a video game. We're in a video game." She glared daggers at the man in armor. "And we may be on the same team for whatever reason, but don't think I didn't see your face in that crowd of scum. If we make it out alive, I'm still dealing with you."

A cursory glance through the powers in the HUD she could see suggested she was a close-range fighter with elemental powers. At least that was in her wheelhouse. "Hey Gun Girl, you seem to know what you're doing. What do we do?"

"There's two big lanes and a jungle full of monsters. Two of us protect towers from the guys on the other side and the third kills jungle monsters and jumps in to help fight the enemies."

Crystal Witch ran forward, seeing an opening into the dark wood and noticing her range of vision was limited to about ten yards ahead of her. "And if their jungle roamer finds me?"

"Then try not to die?"

CW turned back around and arched an eyebrow. "And if I die?"

The pirate shrugged. "Why not try not dying? I'll go to the bottom, and the big clunker can head to the top. This only ends if we break their base, so, you know, don't die."

Nodding, CW faced the armored man one more time before they split up. "Looks like we're stuck together, so if you've got trouble, use that ping option. I might even give a shit," she muttered, disappearing into the woods.

They were in a video game. Cool. Noel tried to remember a video game he might be into, but sometimes trying to access his ill-gotten memories without powers made it hard to recall. He was still thinking when their third was threatening him about retribution. He would be dealt with.

"Huh? Oh yeah, sure." He wasn't overly worried because that was the future and the here and now was confusing enough. Also no friendly fire and a propensity for bullet-proofness made him a tad less worried.

Just a tad.

There were little dudes walking by and he tried to wave a gauntlet in front of one of their faces. They were like little zombies, hell bent on walking in a certain way.

Or computer programs. Okay. He wouldn't feel bad about hurting anyone here, then.

Wasn't there a phone game sort of like this?

Realizing that the girls had been planning without him, he zered back in on the conversation in time to hear that he was supposed to go to the top lane. Kill the enemy base. Not die. It sounded doable on paper.

"What's the point? Not the pings. The game." He motioned up which quickly went to darkness. Beyond a certain point there was no sky. No nothing. "Why send us here?"

The sounds of distant fighting drew his attention. Whatever her answer, they clearly had places where they needed to be and standing behind some surprisingly low castle walls was not that place.

"We'll settle th' score later." He waved to the ladies and hefted his sword so he could jog toward the top lane. Waiting for him there were more little dudes with a different color tunic and also it looked like there was a very small rat... hamster? Thing with a blowdart. It also had a custom name "FistyMcFearmeson."

"Howdy." Noel let his sword drop through one of the little fighting dudes in the middle of melee. In a satisfying explosion of pixels, the enemy minion disappeared and his lil dude advanced. "Crazy game, huh?"

"Die scum!" He was hit by a dart and suddenly all he could see was purple fog. He spun around in a blind panic for a full two seconds before it cleared. Once he could see again, there were a few new things to see. His green bar had decreased a surprising amount. None of the enemy's little dudes were left, at least three of his were. The little rat was running away with his green health also diminished.

Noel watched the last three dudes march bravely to throw tiny pixels at the enemy front turret. One or two tower shots and they each exploded. But already more little dudes were arriving, unaware and unphased by any potential mass massacre.

What was the point indeed? This was a weird place to send them, though maybe they did not have a choice. "My guess? They have a mutant to use this place to keep people. Maybe those girls you were here skeeving on." It was suspicious to CW that there was seemingly no place where the kidnapped girls were being kept.

The party parted ways, though the witch could see some kind of minimap in the corner of her sight. It was a shame this space was used for nefarious purposes because the forest she walked into was hauntingly beautiful. She noticed an altar in the center of the clearing. Maybe there was a ritual that took place out here? She would love to have access to a place like this in New York, but something told her she did not have that kind of time tonight.

Her assumption was right as monsters spawned from the ground in the small alcoves surrounding the clearing. If there were monsters, killing them was probably part of the game, she assumed. Approaching large stone golems, this seemed like a good time to figure out what she could do. She had a chakram (or, technically, an ohmlatl?) she could hit them with, which seemed to do damage. It also upset the golems. Oof.

For giant stone soldiers, they seemed to do less when they hit her than expected. She also had more tools at her disposal. She triggered an ability to dash and strike, which felt good. She could also throw her blade, which felt good, but it felt better after she figured out her other “ability.” She understood why she was turned into this as she jumped toward the wall and felt an elemental empowerment like her burning gems. The elements even let her do cool new things with her other technique. This would be fun if it did not feel like her life was on the line.

Maybe she should start up a Fidgit account when this was all over.

She could hear the armored guy chatting with someone in a nearby lane, but it did not sound like things were peaceful over there. CW noticed a chat option and tried speaking out. ”You dealing with trouble over there? I just have some big monsters to chop down here.” She cleared another camp and noticed a big spider on the other side of an altar. Was that there before?

Approaching the spider, she went to attack it like another camp. It caught her by surprise, lunging at her, causing the witch to stumble back. Much to her surprise, the spider transformed into a woman—this was not just another monster. She attempted to throw a ball of webbing at CW, narrowly missing her. The witch retreated back toward her half of the jungle, where an alter seemed to spark to life. ”Looks like I’m dealing with another person in here. Also, an alter lit up and I feel like it’s important?”